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When a man in the Swiss city of Lugano dressed up as the comic character Deadpool to attend a sneak preview of the new Deadpool 2 film on Monday evening he got far more than he bargained for.

Police tackled him and a friend to the ground after apparently failing to recognise he was a cosplayer dressed in character.

A photo of the incident shows police surrounding the man dressed in red. Two of the officers appear to have weapons drawn. In the left of the photo, police can be seen cuffing the man’s friend who was not in costume.

But it quickly become clear that the suspect was actually dressed as the wisecracking Marvel antihero.

Authorities were mocked on social media after the incident with Swiss supermarket giant Migros even using the incident to advertise a peel-off mask in Ticino, saying "with this you won't get arrested".

But police defended their actions on Monday saying there had been reports of a suspect in possession of two weapons in the centre of Lugano.

“The procedure was part of operational tactics. They [police] have to intervene as quickly as possible when they receive this type of information,” a police spokesperson told the tio news site.

Alessandro Botta, the friend accompanying the man dressed as Deadpool to the cinema, told tio the cosplayer had been tackled to the ground and arrested because he had broken the law by covering his face.